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Canadian Supreme Court Rules Ban On Assisted Suicide Unconstitutional
BarbaraHudson writes with word that Canada's Supreme Court has issued a strong statement in defense of Canadians' right to choose assisted suicide: [A] judgment, which is unsigned to reflect the unanimous institutional weight of the court, says the current ban on assisted suicide infringes on all three of the life, liberty and security of person provisions in Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It does not limit physician-assisted death to those suffering a terminal illness. The court agreed with the trial judge "that a permissive regime with properly designed and administered safeguards was capable of protecting vulnerable people from abuse and error. While there are risks, to be sure, a carefully designed and managed system is capable of adequately addressing them." Parliament has one year to enact new legislation modifying the Criminal Code to conform to the judgment.
It's got to be better than forcing people to continue to live an unbearable life. If you were to do that to a dog, you'd be charged with cruelty, but ending a human's suffering in a dignified fashion? "Oh noes!!" The people who are against assisted suicide need to stop trying to impose their religious or other beliefs on others, same as same-sex marriage. When their time comes, they're free to tough it out til the bitter end, but I suspect that some of them will change their minds.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
When I have no more good days left, and every waking moment is agony or drug-induced, drooling stupor, I would like the option to give these borrowed molecules back to the universe when I am ready...not after my suffering has been prolonged by pointless medical procedure(s).
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
So, a carefully designed and managed system is capable of determining whether your life is not worth living? Presumably they will also find that some people are wrong in wanting to die, otherwise they wouldn't need a system at all.
Which lives are worth living or not sounds to me like the kind of question it's maybe not right to set an official answer to.
I have sympathy with people who feel life isn't worth living. But I wish they would not demand that others validate their choice by killing them.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
I believe the General Attorney of Canada missed the point in this case and did not defend properly his position. If you can easily think anyone has the right to decide for his own life, the point is about asking someone else to kill him. The argument revolved around the right for an individual to put an end to his days, and this has been declared unconstitutional to force him to live. However, what about giving permission to someone to kill someone else? This is the entire point at my humble opinion and this is where there will be abuses. It will become very hard to sue someone who have killed someone else in the conditions described by the Court to prove the killed one has never asked to be killed.
Achille Talon
Hop!
I sure hope not, for three reasons:
1. This shit really stinks, like burning old clothes which were stored in an attic for decades
2. People who are high usually listen to loud music, and it's annoying
3. We can only produce a limited quantity of snacks
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Now this, if these people decide this life is not worth living and decide to kick the bucket legally, without any consequence, what would happen to their businesses? Who would create jobs? Nothing should put the well being and motivation of the small business owner to risk. The access to steady supply of cheap labor and over supply of laborers should be maintained by the government at all costs. Allowing legal suicides would imperil the most sacrosanct class of Americans, the small business owner.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
And paradoxically, the option of assisted suicide is also provides a backstop to suffering that empowers patients to hang on, or attempt painful therapies that they might not otherwise have the will to try.
Knowledge that it's always an option if the suffering becomes too much to bear is of enormous psychological benefit.
"And what do you do about the sort of person who thinks they want to die but decided that irrationally and you expect would change their minds between jumping off a building and hitting the floor?"
If the doctors believe that the person is acting irrationally and they expect the person would change their mind, it just isn't going to happen. That's the whole point of having mandatory safeguards.
"Also, given that for most suicide "attempts" the objective is to get people's attention rather than to die"
[citation needed]
I'm pretty sure that Robin Williams would have disagreed with you. Michael Landsberg certainly does.
And so do I.
Like Landsberg said in one interview: "You're in a meeting and you look at your watch and say 'Sorry, I've got an appointment with my dentist.' No problem. But when you say "Sorry, I've got an appointment with my psychiatrist' ... " Look at how many people say "Gee, I never suspected they were having problems" because of the stigma of mental illness.
So maybe some people are trying to get attention. Maybe that's their way of saying "Why won't someone help me?" But there's nothing selfish about suicide.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Yes, in a perfect world only those who believe others should suffer as long as possible would be the ones who die slow painful deaths, but the world is not perfect, so it unfortunately happens to decent folks as well. We do treat animals better and that is a sad commentary on society.
Even more sad is the old laws forced some people to cut their lives short earlier - killing themselves when they are still physically able because they fear the day they won't be capable of doing it themselves.
Certainly tight controls need to be in place, but most important - and this was important even before this ruling - make sure your family and friends knows your wishes. Many people already have "living wills", I would suggest everyone should make sure their wishes are known before hand. It may not make for the happiest dinner conversation, but it is a conversation well worth having sooner rather than later.
Here is a template from our local health authority. You will find many others on the internet.
http://www.gov.mb.ca/health/li...
How someone can twist the ability for a suffering human to request, of their own volition and under extensive medical supervision, assisted suicide, and turn it into a slippery slope fallacy of death camps and selective culling of the population is beyond me. There is just no connection outside of your ever so slightly deranged brain there.
Fortunately in Canada there's no insurance company to put pressure on people to off themselves. It's not an ideal world, but it's the one we've got, so we do our best.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Most insurance policies don't cover suicide in the first 2 years, but do cover it after.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Maybe you can do it like they do in Switzerland (at least I think it was there).
Someone asks you three times if you are sure you want to off yourself (after you have signed the paperwork and everything), and they hand you a cup of poison.
You have to drink it yourself.
If you are too senile or weak to drink it yourself, tough luck.
You're right - it's not a law, but an acknowledgement that the right to assisted suicide a a constitutional right. Lets hope the government doesn't use the notwithstanding clause to cater to their base for the next election.
People can suffer from a non-terminal disease that still leaves them in pain, unable to fend for themselves, and with zero hope of recovery, so I think it's a good thing that they didn't limit it to the terminally ill. If you had to decide between being hooked up to machines, unable to fend for yourself for even basic needs, always in pain, without even the hope of dying because it's not terminal, I think many would opt for help in shuffling off their mortal coil.
And I see people here calling you names and talking about how a freak of nature you are. They do this via anonymous log in but it happens and you cannot deny it. It has even happened in this article posting over the same damn post I started replying to. Or does your LGBT club shield you from those comments? They will not shield a lot of others. And even if they did, you as well as anyone else will always know what others are thinking and saying- even if they do not say it to your face.
I was outed on slashdot a decade ago, so it was inevitable that someone would eventually try to use it against me. After that had been going on for a while, I changed my signature to send the signal that I'm not ashamed of being a transsexual, and neither should others be. It's all part of "paying it forward." :-)
If they were to log in, or at least make salient points as to why they feel the way they do, I would be happy to engage them in dialog. In the meantime, I think most people don't really have a problem with it.
When you tell a friend and they say "Is that all? I thought it would be something bad." you know they're good with it. I lost one friend over it. I was disappointed, but that's old news. As for the people around me, we talk about it on occasion - usually after I make a joke that only works because I'm trans and someone present didn't know, so I have to explain why it's so funny to everyone else. Drives my sisters nuts, because most of them think I should be ashamed. But sometimes I get a laugh out of them, and I think that finally they're "getting it." Sort of. Hopefully.
Yes, adults torment kids. So do other kids. And they've been charged and convicted. We also run regular PSAs reminding kids that sharing a "special" photo of another kid is distributing child pornography (yes, kids have been convicted for that. And courts are now allowing parents and the media (with the parents consent) to name the victims who have committed suicide, to put a face to the act.
We're not there bet, but we're making remarkable progress on multiple fronts.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.